South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson showed the country and the world what he really is during Barack Obama’s Health Care Reform speech to a joint session of Congress last Wednesday…and by that we don’t mean just an ignorant, unprincipled peckerwood with no respect for the office of President of the United States, or the institution to which he was, incredibly, elected to serve. Unfortunately, it’s much more distressing than that.
If it were that simple, President Obama’s subsequent, gracious acceptance of Wilson’s so-called apology would have led us to conclude that it’s time to move on…except that it’s not that simple. Oh, Joe Wilson is everything we said above, but he’s more than that. He’s also a racist who, because of enablers and apologists like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin, now feels it’s acceptable to bring his racism out of the closet and put it on display for the world to see.
So there was Wilson offering to keep the welcome mat out at his Washington office Saturday for somewhere between an estimated fifty and a hundred thousand like-minded people who gathered in our nation’s capitol for something called the 912 Project or the 912 March…a staged event conceived in the twisted, unbalanced, paranoid mind of the aforementioned Beck. And although they arrived both as individuals and groups who claimed kinship with or interest in any number of causes, what they were really there to do was show their true color…WHITE!
They can hide behind any banner they find and call themselves whatever they like, but the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of those who participated in this event are extreme, right-wing ideologues who became unhinged when a black man was duly and constitutionally elected President of these United States. And now, because the enablers are telling them it’s okay to hate the President and anyone who supports him, overt racism is the right-wing flavor of the moment.
If it wasn’t such a sad commentary on what public discourse and deportment in America has become, it would be laughable. Actually, no it wouldn’t. It’s just plain sad!
Two things before we wrap it up for this edition of our PWC blog. First, one of the funniest albeit saltiest journals we regularly follow is the Rude Pundit. For his take on Saturday’s display of lunacy at the 912 event in Washington, go to http://www.rudepundit.blogspot.com/ . Suffice it to say that ‘The Rude One’ has a way of putting things the way we’d often like to put them…if only we weren’t worried about what our mothers would think.
And finally, here’s an editorial that was sent to us by a friend which appeared in today’s Toronto Globe and Mail. It concerns the Health Care Reform debate currently raging in America. It’s short, concise, and, in our estimation, right on the money.
By Eugene Lang and Philip DeMont
From Monday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Monday, Sep. 14, 2009 03:21AM EDT
"It is rare for Canada to get noticed in the United States. In fact, it is almost unprecedented for anything Canadian to be the focal point of debate in Washington. Yet we have seen just that in recent months during the congressional wrangling over U.S. President Barack Obama's attempts to reform health insurance.
Canada's medicare system has suddenly been thrust into the spotlight south of the border. It has been pilloried by the Republicans in Congress, the subject of derisive and distorted television advertisements, described variously as a system of medicine by bureaucrat, a statist form of health care afflicted by gross inequities and inefficiencies, one that pales in comparison to the U.S. model. The hysterical tone of the anti-medicare rhetoric among Republicans would make one think Canada is North Korea.
But there is an inconvenient truth that the Republican ideology cannot dispute. Canada's approach to providing citizens with universal health insurance is superior to the U.S. model of private insurance. When we get beyond the anti-medicare ideology and histrionics on Capitol Hill, we can establish this by reference to four basic numbers that give a good sense of our system versus the system in the United States.
Life expectancy is a basic measure of the quality of health care. In the U.S., a citizen will live 77.8 years on average. In Canada, you can expect to live two and a half years longer (80.4 years). Infant mortality is also a vital indicator of health care. In the United States, 6.37 infants die out of every 1,000. In Canada the number is 5.4 out of a 1,000.
But what about the cost differences of the two approaches to health care? Surely our Leviathan-like system, which produces such enviable results, must cost a fortune relative to the U.S. model.
The best measure of health care costs is the percentage a country spends relative to the size of its economy, or its gross domestic product (GDP). Canadians spend about 10 per cent of GDP on health. Americans spend 16 per cent to achieve inferior results on life expectancy and infant mortality.
Finally, it is estimated that there are somewhere around 40 million Americans – about 12 per cent of their population, well in excess of the total population of Canada – who have no medical insurance whatsoever. These unfortunate people are literally on their own in paying for any and all medical treatments they require. That gap in coverage is staggering, making the United States an outlier among all advanced Western nations.
One might ask how many uninsured citizens exist in Canada? The answer is zero – all Canadians are insured. In this country, good-quality, universally accessible medical care is regarded as a basic element of citizenship, kind of like owning a gun is in the U.S.
So to sum up. We live longer than the Americans do. We are less likely to die at or soon after birth than the Americans are. All Canadians have medical insurance, whereas a huge number of Americans don't. And we pay less as a society for health care than they do in the United States. Four numbers paint a stark picture. And when you strip away the anti-medicare ideological rants and falsehoods on display in Washington, Canada's approach to health insurance would probably sound pretty good to many Americans.
To their credit, by putting public insurance on the table as a supplement to private plans, the Democrats in the U.S. Congress are trying to drag the United States into the club of civilized nations when it comes to health care. We've been in that club since the establishment of medicare more than 40 years ago.
Don't get us wrong here. We are not saying medicare is perfect; it is far from that, and it requires constant improvement, as most Canadians understand. But it is not a bad deal for citizens of this country.
The Republican-led anti-medicare lobby in Congress knows these numbers and facts. But they are regarded as inconvenient truths that must be ignored in the crusade to discredit the Canadian approach to health insurance, to ensure no public option creeps into the U.S. system. Anti-government ideology is running amok in Washington, trumping facts and rational debate, distorting one of the most important public policy issues the United States has grappled with in decades.
Ultimately, the U.S. public will pay the price for that."
So there you have it. As always, your comments and opinions are encouraged. We’ll talk to you again tomorrow.
SC
Showing posts with label Canadian health system. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Canadian health system. Show all posts
Monday, September 14, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Shona The Shill:
In our last post we told you about Shona Holmes, the unfortunate woman from Waterdown, Ontario who, as we found out in a dramatic TV spot that recently began airing nationally, was diagnosed with what she described as a brain tumor. And again according to her, the Canadian health care system told her it couldn’t fit treatment of same into their schedule for six months. In her estimation she would have been dead by then…and jeez, a brain tumor! How could anyone ever doubt a story like that?
Funny thing about ‘walking back the cat’ though. When you start pulling on a thread as you trace a story back to its routes, more often than not the entire garment begins to unravel…and pretty soon the emperor, or in this case the empress, has no clothes.
Our girl Shona ended up making her way to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona where, for a mere $100,000.00, they confirmed the diagnosis, did some additional testing, performed the appropriate operation and sent her home fully cured just four days after the surgery. Trouble is, the surgery wasn’t for a brain tumor, or brain cancer as Fox News so typically overstated during their interview with this unfortunate victim of Canada’s socialized health care system. It was for the removal of a benign cyst…and they excised it not by boring through her skull, but by going up her nose with something akin to a Roto Rooter and popping that sucker like a big ol’ zit.
What she actually had was called a Rathke’s Cleft Cyst, a rare, fluid-filled sac that grows near the pituitary gland at the base of the brain. It can cause hormone and vision problems, both of which Holmes had been experiencing, and can also cause more serious problems if left untreated. But it is not…NOT…life threatening, and is normally treatable with minimally invasive surgery, as was the case in this instance.
End of story, right? Our victim/heroine escapes the tentacles of Canada’s oppressive, socialized health care system, heads south to that ‘shining city on the hill’, gets the treatment she was denied in her own country, and finally goes back home to live happily ever after. Wow! If it weren’t for this damn gag reflex it would probably bring tears to our eyes.
Here’s the thing, though. This procedure took place four years ago, but Americans For Prosperity/Patients United Now didn’t see the need to produce and release a TV spot featuring Holmes until just recently… when they undoubtedly felt it could do the most public relations damage to any Health Care Reform initiatives currently being considered by Congress. And the Mayo Clinic, which first wrote about this story in 2007 as a not so subtle dig at Canada’s public health care system, and a not so subtle plug about their own expertise, all of a sudden decided to re-release it this summer to coincide with the release of the TV spot. Oh the humanity!
What a crock of unadulterated horse pucky! For openers there is no way…no freaking way…that anyone with either a life threatening or immediate need medical condition gets put on hold by the Canadian health care system, unless there has been some kind of misdiagnosis or they have somehow fallen through the cracks. And neither of those things could ever have happened here, in the good ol' USA, right?
Oh, you may have to wait a while for that vasectomy or nose job, and maybe even for that hip or knee replacement…and that could never happen here either, eh? But if you need treatment NOW for ANYTHING that is in any way life threatening, the Canadian system will make sure you’re taken care of. Anyone who tries to tell you differently is either misinformed, or just plain lying for their own selfish reasons…like that health insurance agent we told you about yesterday.
We don’t know what Shona Holmes was paid or given for agreeing to do that ill-advised TV spot or the Fox News interview decrying the Canadian public health care system…maybe a ton of money, maybe all the expenses associated with her treatment at the Mayo Clinic, maybe nothing? But what we do know is this. She is nothing more than a shill…and she’s being used by extreme right-wing interests in this country who, for their own selfish reasons, will do anything to try and stop any type of ‘public health care for all’ from becoming a reality in the United States.
The Canadian system isn’t perfect. Nobody ever said it was. But like ours, the quality of care is world class. The difference is that their system is significantly more accessible and exponentially more effective and efficient than what we have here…or maybe ‘what we don’t have here’ would be a more accurate way to describe it!
And here’s a little nugget for you that you probably don’t know…and you’ll certainly never be told by anyone who leans to the right in this country. When asked in a poll at the turn of the millennium to pick who they thought was the most important person in the history of their country, Canadians overwhelmingly selected a man by the name of Tommy Douglas. The late Mr. Douglas is noteworthy for a few reasons. He was the father-in-law of actor Donald Sutherland and the grandfather of actor Keifer Sutherland…and he’s also the man primarily responsible for making Canada’s public health care system a reality. We’re fairly certain the latter reason is why so many Canadians named him the most important man in their country’s history.
For more on the Shona Holmes traveling circus, there's some excellent material on these sites:
Funny thing about ‘walking back the cat’ though. When you start pulling on a thread as you trace a story back to its routes, more often than not the entire garment begins to unravel…and pretty soon the emperor, or in this case the empress, has no clothes.
Our girl Shona ended up making her way to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona where, for a mere $100,000.00, they confirmed the diagnosis, did some additional testing, performed the appropriate operation and sent her home fully cured just four days after the surgery. Trouble is, the surgery wasn’t for a brain tumor, or brain cancer as Fox News so typically overstated during their interview with this unfortunate victim of Canada’s socialized health care system. It was for the removal of a benign cyst…and they excised it not by boring through her skull, but by going up her nose with something akin to a Roto Rooter and popping that sucker like a big ol’ zit.
What she actually had was called a Rathke’s Cleft Cyst, a rare, fluid-filled sac that grows near the pituitary gland at the base of the brain. It can cause hormone and vision problems, both of which Holmes had been experiencing, and can also cause more serious problems if left untreated. But it is not…NOT…life threatening, and is normally treatable with minimally invasive surgery, as was the case in this instance.
End of story, right? Our victim/heroine escapes the tentacles of Canada’s oppressive, socialized health care system, heads south to that ‘shining city on the hill’, gets the treatment she was denied in her own country, and finally goes back home to live happily ever after. Wow! If it weren’t for this damn gag reflex it would probably bring tears to our eyes.
Here’s the thing, though. This procedure took place four years ago, but Americans For Prosperity/Patients United Now didn’t see the need to produce and release a TV spot featuring Holmes until just recently… when they undoubtedly felt it could do the most public relations damage to any Health Care Reform initiatives currently being considered by Congress. And the Mayo Clinic, which first wrote about this story in 2007 as a not so subtle dig at Canada’s public health care system, and a not so subtle plug about their own expertise, all of a sudden decided to re-release it this summer to coincide with the release of the TV spot. Oh the humanity!
What a crock of unadulterated horse pucky! For openers there is no way…no freaking way…that anyone with either a life threatening or immediate need medical condition gets put on hold by the Canadian health care system, unless there has been some kind of misdiagnosis or they have somehow fallen through the cracks. And neither of those things could ever have happened here, in the good ol' USA, right?
Oh, you may have to wait a while for that vasectomy or nose job, and maybe even for that hip or knee replacement…and that could never happen here either, eh? But if you need treatment NOW for ANYTHING that is in any way life threatening, the Canadian system will make sure you’re taken care of. Anyone who tries to tell you differently is either misinformed, or just plain lying for their own selfish reasons…like that health insurance agent we told you about yesterday.
We don’t know what Shona Holmes was paid or given for agreeing to do that ill-advised TV spot or the Fox News interview decrying the Canadian public health care system…maybe a ton of money, maybe all the expenses associated with her treatment at the Mayo Clinic, maybe nothing? But what we do know is this. She is nothing more than a shill…and she’s being used by extreme right-wing interests in this country who, for their own selfish reasons, will do anything to try and stop any type of ‘public health care for all’ from becoming a reality in the United States.
The Canadian system isn’t perfect. Nobody ever said it was. But like ours, the quality of care is world class. The difference is that their system is significantly more accessible and exponentially more effective and efficient than what we have here…or maybe ‘what we don’t have here’ would be a more accurate way to describe it!
And here’s a little nugget for you that you probably don’t know…and you’ll certainly never be told by anyone who leans to the right in this country. When asked in a poll at the turn of the millennium to pick who they thought was the most important person in the history of their country, Canadians overwhelmingly selected a man by the name of Tommy Douglas. The late Mr. Douglas is noteworthy for a few reasons. He was the father-in-law of actor Donald Sutherland and the grandfather of actor Keifer Sutherland…and he’s also the man primarily responsible for making Canada’s public health care system a reality. We’re fairly certain the latter reason is why so many Canadians named him the most important man in their country’s history.
For more on the Shona Holmes traveling circus, there's some excellent material on these sites:
http://mediamattersaction.org/factcheck/200905270002
And if you really want a laugh, check out the Fox News anti-health-care-reform infomercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBJGTcfcWGo
Steve
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